9/11: The day Virginia politics changed forever – Richmond Times-Dispatch

That one of the planes went down in Virginia – hitting the often-bustling Pentagon, seat of the defense establishment that since World War II had drawn thousands to Northern Virginia, transforming farmland to suburbs – meant that Gov. Jim Gilmore, a Republican whose four-year term was winding down, would have been among the first state officials briefed on the crash, which killed 184 people aboard the aircraft and inside the Pentagon as well as the five hijackers.

I immediately called Mark Miner, the governor’s press secretary. He said Gilmore was being apprised in real time; that details on deaths, injuries and damage were still murky and that the governor would soon be making a statement. Miner could offer little other than to say I should get to the state Capitol as soon as possible. I arrived at the Jefferson-designed statehouse, immediately noting it was far quieter than usual, with the few people there clustered around the television set at Chicken’s, as the snack bar – then on the ground floor – was known.

With events moving quickly – and federal authorities indicating that these were, indeed, terror attacks – the editors at The Times-Dispatch, five blocks west of the state Capitol, said that the newspaper would do what few, if any, of us had seen the T-D do before: publish an Extra edition. For those of us on the politics beat, including Michael Hardy, who covered the governor’s office, that meant shipping back to the newsroom details from the Gilmore appearance. My recollection is that we would do so by telephone.

The governor, a former prosecutor and U.S. Army intelligence officer who, at the time, was leading a congressionally authorized study of American readiness to terrorism, offered a grim account of the attack on the Pentagon. He reported on the mobilization of state troopers, local police and firefighters, and emergency medical technicians – henceforth, “first responders” – as well as the scramble by area hospitals to treat the dying and injured.

That evening, Gilmore visited hospitals, meeting with local authorities, the families of victims as well as survivors. The next day, he would share details of those encounters – many of them moving, even for Gilmore, not one ordinarily given to public displays of emotion.

Despite the blur of developments on 9/11 – at the state Capitol, in the newsroom and on the campaign trail – one memory remains quite crisp: A telephone conversation that afternoon with my wife, Clare. She said that our son, Felix – then 7 years old and in the second grade – had learned during class of the attack in Manhattan, where his grandmother lived. The boy was very upset, fearing harm had come to a loved one. Though he would soon learn that she was OK, Felix, nonetheless, remained jarred by what had happened 360 miles north of his hometown, Richmond.

9/11 erased many barriers, distance – and the safety it supposedly suggests – being one of them.